Decent food, mediocre service—Sphinx Restaurant, Gdansk, Poland

Sphinx Restauracje

Dlugi Targ 31/32, Gdansk, Poland

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ 😶

We just came back from our trip to the Old Town, where we decided to eat a late-lunch/early-supper at Sphinx restaurant, located not too far away from the Fontanna Neptuno, around 3 p.m. The place was full and there was already a queue at the entrance, so we thought it must be a good place to eat. After waiting quite a while, we were finally led in to our table—situated at the left corner of the outer dining area, farthest away from the entrance, where we had a hard time navigating around tables with our daughter’s stroller. Normally this would have been okay with me—it was a small area, so I understand it was a little bit crammed. But after seeing the three groups that came after us get their menus immediately while we’ve had to call the head waiter’s (or front-of-house) attention before we got ours, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit discriminated upon. Whether it was because we were obvious tourists while the other three groups were Polish, or that I happen to look very Asian, I don’t know. The fact that the kids in the other groups were also given something to pass time with while they wait for their food while ours was ignored, also didn’t help disspell my suspicion. The only thing that saved this restaurant from getting a downright low mark in terms of service was Rafał, the waiter who attended us. He was quite friendly and attentive. (I hope he gets the entire 15 PLN service charge that was in the bill…)

The food that was served us was quite good though, to be fair. Nonetheless, I decided to mark it down as well since I got a lot of small bones in my fish dish, which I believe should not happen when you’re serving fileted fish.